Fwurg

[T'Sal]

((OOC: I do not think we had 6 hours time to solve a puzzle. OC it is good that you OC solved the puzzled, but I do not think you have had enough IC time. For making progress in this thread it is good. I did not make a solve check so that I could later take my time to solve the puzzled as I first wanted to investigate the crime scene which apparently did not result in anything significant further.

I do not know how to proceed.))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: @T'sal: What?
@Tera: I do have something to say about your PM but I cannot do that at this point because of reasons.

Anyway, moving on.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have solved this code! :)

Let's continue.))

Having solved the code the three Jedi contemplated the cryptic message and where it pointed to. If there were bodies they didn't yet know of, the more secure areas of Unity City, such as the Embassies or the Senate, would be unlikely. UCPD and likely the Jedi would already be all over those areas.

Wherever the message pointed, the three Jedi would need to decide where to go or what to do next.

[T'Sal]

T'sal tried together with the police investigator to finish collecting all the evidence at the crime and analyze them. Hopefully, there were more clues than the code to be found by taking ground/hair/etc. samples and analyze them.

((Check: 12 = 9 Force Level + 3 Vision -- Searching for more clues with police investigators and analyze them with equipment.))

After that T'sal takes out her datapad with the map of the area. She searches for other possible locations nearby.

((Check: 14 = 9 Force Level + 5 Reason -- Looking at map and reasoning likely locations.))

[Tera Inogo]

Tera, not having any specific expertise in such crime investigations, looks at the scene again before pointing out the particles of vegetation to the investigators.

[Ariana Danacia]

"Good job Tera, this cipher was harder than I expected. To be honest these guys really want to get the attention of very specific people when they make the clues this hard.

'after purgatory souls go walk between the homes away from home of stars'

Homes away from home of stars sounds like the embassies district to me. Is their a significant building or square between the embassies?"

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: @T'sal: your first check: approved. Your second check: denied. Reason: It's your job to solve the mystery, your denied checks expect me to solve it for you. I'm not going to do that.

My advice is to use your brain, remember that Google knows everything and that three heads know more then one.))

T'sal helped the investigators finish collecting the evidence. Two of the bodies where identified via DNA. Both where present in the UCPDs missing persons database. One had been filed five months ago the other one month ago. The coroner asked if they could take the bodies to the morgue for autopsy. All in all there was little more to learn here.

The medical investigator suggested the murder weapon was a gardening tool after Tera pointed out the vegetation particles.

"Well the embassies are significant buildings." The investigator replied to Ariana. "I'll check for any recent reports from that area."

After doing a few things on a datapad he spoke again.

"There was a report of a suspicious figure and some strange graffiti in that area, less then two hours ago."

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: @ST: I'm not sure how you expect Stuiter to get information on the map of Unity City from Google. Last time I checked (literally just now, to be sure about what I'm saying here :P) Google Maps does not feature a map of Unity City. That being as it is, the denied check effectively means that any IC knowledge our characters might have about Unity City that we OOCly do not have is now lost to our characters as well, since it is apparently inapplicable to the problem at hand (because that's what checks are for basically: to allow us to use IC abilities and see how well we do without necessarily having them OOCly).

Might you be convinced to change the verdict to Failed? That way, T'Sal's knowledge about the city she has lived in for the past five years is not suddenly gone -- instead she simply failed at deducing the whereabouts of our killer, or the location of his next attack (which sounds very reasonable to me, with what little information we currently have).))

Tera looked at the medical investigator with a dark expression and replied, rather dryly, "I could have guessed that as well. So, do you know a gardening tool that can be used to make precise and deliberate cuts like these?", she looked at the corpses again.

"And while you're thinking about that, try to determine what kind of vegetation that is -- I have a hunch that the killer might have done that on purpose, or gave us some information they did not intend to leave."

[Ariana Danacia]

"Give me the location of the reported area. We will have to follow up on that. I will take two investigators and two police officers with me."

Ariana met up with T'sal and Tera. "There is a report of suspisious activity near the embassies. We should check it out. Anyone want to join me?"

Ariana waited a minute for the others to join her.

After a minute she joined with two investigators and two police officers and moved to the next location in their vehicle.

[Tera Inogo]

"I'll join you in a moment Master. I'd like to know the answer to my question first."

Tera waits for the investigator's results before joining Ariana to go to the next location.

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: @Tera: My advice is meant more general then on this specific instance. I realise this wasn't clear before and have added space to make it more clear that the advice is separate.

The reason I have added advice (which I normally would not do) is because I have seen Stuiter try to get the answers from me, without trying to solve it by themself, twice. My advice is an attempt to not make Stuiter feel excluded, by offering a different way to approach the problem. Because I realise it can be difficult for someone with no knowledge of cryptology to crack a code.

The reason I denied the check rather than failed it is because I want you three to solve these things yourselves. That way you can get a better sense of accomplishment, which I believe will make this more fun :). Also it was more a riddle that needed to be solved rather then a location to be found. I am leaving the check denied.))

[T'Sal]

((OOC: Just as Brend says. I'm IC looking at the map for other significant places to be there which I IC know but OC do not.

I think there is always the problems with role playing what you OC and IC can do. My character is good at puzzling, but I am not.))

"Yes, please bring in the bodies for a full body autopsies."

T'sal joins Ariana to the next location.

[Dragonmaster352]

The three jedi, along with the police officers and investigators, quickly arrived at the location of the graffiti. The graffiti was placed on a concrete wall of a small office building near several embassies.



A quick examination made it clear the red letters and numbers were just ordinary paint, not blood. All three jedi noticed the similarities between the writing of the graffiti and the code they had encountered earlier at the crime scene.

((OOC: Because the writing in the image is unclear for certain letters, I will save you some trouble.

Code: Select all

Y2d5IHpuZ3ogbGF0PyBya3p5IGpraW9qayBjbmd6IGNvcn
Igbmd2dmt0IG90IHpuayBtZ3JnZGUsIHluZ3JyIGNrPyAg
            6                 4

))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: Ok it's been over a week now and I haven't heard from anyone. Are you all just busy trying to solve the code, have been too busy or have you all been thinking 'this is stupid and no fun, I'll leave it to the others'?

You should have everything you need to solve this one. It might help if you post anything you already have, this may give others ideas.

That said if you all do think this code cracking is stupid, I'm willing to toss it out. If you just want more roleplay, don't worry that will come (though that is also influenced by you).))

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: EDIT 2: Forgot to add this too: (@Dragonmaster: I wrote this reply because you explicitly asked for it, nothing in it should be read as a critique of your person, but as a commentary on some aspects of this mission. Puzzle missions are notoriously hard to run, so don't worry if things don't pan out the way you'd hoped -- it happened to all ST's before you and will happen to all ST's after you.)

I haven't replied yet because of a combination of factors. Among them lack of time, but more relevantly, lack of motivation.

On the motivation part, to be perfectly blunt, I did think "this is no fun, I'll leave it to the others." -- the first step is glaringly obvious, but after decoding the base64 string (which has nothing to do with puzzling, just the application of an algorithm on the web or in Python) I ended up with a still-encrypted string without any clear way forward, so I stopped there. The other factor to my motivation is the lack of reaction to my character's attempts to gather more information -- note that I do not think this is on purpose! Yet it still impacts my motivation when my roleplay is ignored and we are instead brought to the next puzzle that we learned of through some NPC dropping us the hint, instead of through solving the previous puzzle.

I like puzzles if they add to the plot and can actually be solved by thinking about the problem from an in-character perspective. I don't like googling for the answer or simply brute-forcing all possible solutions by writing a small program to break it; I am here to roleplay from the perspective of my character, not to write code or use google to get an OOC solution. For me, there is little motivation because these are multi-step puzzles where the first step is only a minor speedbump, and the second step is exceedingly hard. Since the previous puzzle did not give our characters anything interesting I decided to not spend more of my time after looking at this one for about half an hour.

Note that I don't necessarily think this puzzle is stupid, I've simply lost motivation to attempt further work on it since I have no expectation of either an intrinsic reward (code-breaking is boring to me, so there's no feeling of "Booyeah, solved it!" when done), nor an expectation of an extrinsic reward (the last puzzle did not produce interesting or cool roleplay, nor did it seem to produce anything actionable or something that clearly allowed us to check whether we have the correct answer to the question).

I'm deliberately not replying with an IC message here as well, since that would simply collapse this message. I have scheduled posting something here for the saturday afternoon.

EDIT 1: Forgot to mention one very important thing: Thank for you for running a mission! Even though I lost motivation for the code-breaking part, I am really glad that I finally get to play Tera Inogo as a character. I created her as a PC almost two years ago, and finally get to actually play!

EDIT 3: And, of course, this is only my opinion. The opinion of th other players is can be wildly different.))

[T'Sal]

((OOC: Like I already said, I am OC not so good in code breaking, so I let it up to the other.
I agreed with Brend that just dropping us at the next puzzle is not so much fun and not really motivating from a role-play perceptive.))

[Ariana Danacia]

((OOC: I am in agreement with Brend. My time is very limited at the moment as well due to work and other commitments. At this moment finding the motivation for yet another puzzle is just not happening :( I am trying really hard to stay active on fwurg, this kind of puzzles is just not my idea of fun.

I also want to stress the fact that this is not a personal thing against you as a storyteller at all. You are doing a pretty good job, unfortunately you are simply asking too much from us at this moment which we can not motivate ourselfs for OOC.))

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana takes a sample of the Graffiti and tries to find out how old it is.

((Check: 17 = 10 Force Level + 7 Reason -- Analyzing the paint to determine how old it is.))

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: Note to the reader: the forum screws up the double space at the end of the decoded base64, which is why there is only a single space at the end of the string if you copy-paste it!))

"Mmm, I have no idea what to make of this, other than applying a simple translation algorithm to get at least something resembling a sentence..."

"Here, this is all I can make of this", she shows some scribbles in the sand, apparently she did the translation mentally as there was no medical examiner to borrow equipment from:

|cgy zngz lat? rkzy jkiojk cngz corr ngvvkt ot znk mgrgde, yngrr ck? |

"Note that the two vertical lines are not part of the result, I put those down to show that the message contains two blanks — or spaces — at the end. Given the primitive base64 encoding used to hide the ciphered message, this seems to be significant. Because the correct encoding of this ciphertext in base64 would be what I scribbled down here:"

Y2d5IHpuZ3ogbGF0PyBya3p5IGpraW9qayBjbmd6IGNvcnIgbmd2dmt0IG90IHpuayBtZ3JnZGUsIHluZ3JyIGNrPw==

"Someone who is this meticulous in placing puzzles in the world would not make such a mistake without it having some significance... Maybe it has to do with the fact that there are 2 blank spaces? I'm not sure..."

[T'Sal]

"We have a start for finding the answer, maybe there are more hints."

T'sal takes a good look at the location. She walks around the building as to find hopefully some more clues.

((Check: 12 = 9 Force Level + 3 Vision -- Looking around to find more hints))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: checks: approved))

The paint was still wet, it had barely had any time to dry. It couldn't have been more then an hour old.

As T'Sal looked around, a flowerbed caught her attention. Unlike all the other flowerbeds around, all the flowers in this bed were dead. All except one, a particularly beautiful flower seemed to thrive where others withered. After examining the flowerbed closer, it seemed as someone had put in an unusual amount of effort to keep the withered flowers alive. Some of them had been cut. The only flower that had remained untouched was the beautiful living one.

"Perhaps who ever left the graffiti wants us to end something?" One of the officers they brought suggested. "Have you tried the cipher you used for the first message? Or a variation on it? What was it, a something Ceasar cipher?"

Another officer was mumbling something. "Two and nothing. Two, zero?"

[Tera Inogo]

Tera was busy scribbling a big matrix of letters in the sand.

After a while, she stated "Right. After that, she started decoding the message by looking up letters in the matrix."

was that fun? lets decide what will happen in the galaxy, shall we?

"Hey guys, I think I deciphered this one. I sure hope there's not more of these things. Oh, and it's a strange question again... This guy really does not like to be up front about what he wants."

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: Quick note I should have put in my actual post: I had to finish this one because I had already posted it. I had originally planned to have another, however because of your feedback I have scrapped that one. By the time I knew how to rework the rest of the mission, you had already posted so I couldn't just edit my post and be done with it.

I hope this will alleviate worries and gets the fun back into the mission.))

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: No worries! I kinda had that feeling, but Tera herself also really had it with this guy, she just wants to catch him instead of being taunted ^_^))

[T'Sal]

T'sal carefully takes some samples of the flower bed and takes multiple pictures. On the holonet she tries to find out want kind of flowers and other plants are in the bed. She then goes back to the other.

((Check: 14 = 9 Force Level + 5 Intuition -- Looking on holonet the exact species of the flower and the other plants in the flowerbed.))

"I have looked around and found something strange. A flowerbed with everything dead except this one flower. " She shows the pictures.

"Is he/she planning on killing all species except one?"

[Tera Inogo]

Tera, making sure she does not step on her own writings, walks over to T'Sal and the flowerbed and looks at them as well. She might not know all that much about flowers, but maybe she spots something T'Sal missed.

Any clue is better than nothing at the moment.

((Check: 7 = 4 Force Level + 3 Vision -- Looks at the flowerbed as well))